


Unexpected Soulmates

by rosesparks



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 12:07:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9322919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosesparks/pseuds/rosesparks
Summary: Jared Padalecki has hated Jensen Ackles for as long as he could remember and wants nothing to do with him.  Unfortunately, the universe has other plans.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this back during NaNoWriMo last year and I'm finally getting around to editing and posting. Enjoy!

For as long as Jared could remember, he had hated Jensen Ackles. Jensen was the epitome of a perfect person. Jared had suffered through thirteen years of school with Jensen. Kindergarten all the way until the graduated high school. No matter what Jared did, Jensen always managed to somehow do it better. If Jared got a 95% on a test, Jensen got a 96%. If Jared got a 100%, Jensen somehow got 101% thanks to the extra credit questions. When Jared decided to run for student council in eighth grade, Jensen did too and Jensen beat Jared by two votes to become class president while Jared was stuck being vice president. 

In high school, Jared tried out for the cross country team and was thrilled to find that he made that junior varsity team. He was one of only two freshmen to make it and felt incredibly proud of himself until he found out that Jensen Ackles had made the varsity soccer team. Throughout the rest of high school, the same pattern continued. Anytime Jared did something, Jensen Ackles did something better. 

When it came time to apply for colleges, Jared thought he would finally be able to get away from Jensen. Jared was thrilled to get accepted into five schools, including his top choice of Stanford. Unfortunately for him, Jensen Ackles was accepted into six schools, including Stanford.

Graduation day couldn’t come fast enough. Jared could finally be done with Jensen and be able to start fresh when he arrived at Stanford in the fall. While everyone else said their tearful goodbyes to Jensen, Jared stood off to the side. His role of salutatorian was out shown by Jensen’s valedictorian. 

The California air was so different, so that the moment Jared got out of his parents’ car, he knew that everything was going to change. This was his chance. A fresh start where Jared could shine. There would be no Jensen Ackles to constantly steal away the spotlight. And so Jared moved into his new dorm room. It was small but his roommate, Stephen Amell, seemed pretty cool. He still had a few days before classes started so he took to wandering the campus and trying to familiarize himself where everything was. In the meantime, he also met more of the guys on his floor and jared knew that it was going to be a great time.

On his first day of classes, Jared walked into the lecture hall for Calculus II, having tested out of Calculus I. There were lots of empty seats and Jared had the same crisis everyone has: where do I sit. He laughed at himself for being silly before taking a spot in the front half of the lecture hall. There were empty seats around him, but there were still almost ten minutes before the class was supposed to start. Eventually, those seats would fill up.

What Jared was unprepared for was who filled up those seats. Jared was twirling his pen and playing on his phone when he finally looked up. There, sitting in the seat exactly two rows in front of him was Jensen Ackles. 

What. 

The. 

Fuck.

Jensen wasn’t supposed to go to Stanford. Jensen was supposed to be at some other Ivy League school out east. Yale or Princeton or Harvard or something. Not Stanford. But yet, here Jensen was, sitting two rows in front of Jared in the exact same lecture hall at Stanford. 

Suddenly, Stanford and his fresh start didn’t seem so appealing anymore.

Jared hardly payed attention through the entire lecture. He glanced at his syllabus and circled some important dates like the professor had suggested, but he couldn’t stop himself from glaring at the person sitting two rows in front of him.

As soon as the lecture was over, Jared marched right up to Jensen. “What are you doing here?” Jared asked bluntly.

“Jared!” Jensen said cheerfully. “Nice to see you. I didn’t know you’d be taking this class.”

“And I didn’t know you’d actually be going to Stanford.”

“Yeah, well some things came up, and I changed my mind. Now I’m here,” Jensen said.

Jared continued to glare at Jensen. He didn’t buy Jensen’s story one bit. Jensen definitely changed his mind to come to Stanford so he could keep making Jared’s life a living hell. “Something didn’t come up. This was your plan all along wasn’t it? You just had to come here so you could keep proving that you were better than me.”

“Jared, what are you talking about?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Ackles. I know you get off on being better than me. That’s why you’ve been doing it for the last thirteen years. You always had to prove that you were better than me.”

“Look, I’m sorry if it came out that way, but I was never trying to prove anything.”

“Bullshit.”

Jensen shrugged. 

“You know what? Just stay the hell away from me,” Jared said. “Just stay the hell away from me.” With that, Jared stomped away cursing under his breath. Damn that Jensen Ackles. Damn him. Of course he was playing nice. That’s what Jensen did. He was always nice, which just added to his perfect persona. Then no one would ever think he did anything wrong. It was the perfect plan. He could go about his evil ways, but he could always claim innocence because everyone would believe him.

Jared finished out the rest of the day and was thrilled to find that Jensen wasn’t in anymore of his classes. At least there was that. But that didn’t stop Jared from sending an email to his advisor asking what it would take to transfer Calculus II classes because the time he was currently taking wasn’t going to work for him anymore.

***

Despite Jared’s wishes, he wasn’t able to transfer to a different Calculus II class. All the other classes that worked with his schedule were full and they weren’t going to make an exception just for him to switch times. Especially when he couldn’t give a concrete reason for needing to switch. Apparently “Actual asshole Jensen Ackles being in the same class as me” isn’t considered a good enough reason to transfer classes. So Jared suffered through it.

He switched up his seating arrangement during the second lecture, choosing instead to sit in the back corner of the classroom. Who cared what the teacher thought about him. He still did his homework and showed up to class, but he made sure to avoid Jensen Ackles.

His plan worked out great for the first month and a half of school. Sure he still had to see Jensen Ackles, but he didn’t have to interact with him. They had their first midterm and while it was a challenge, Jared felt that it went pretty well. When they got their exams back a week later, their professor announced that the highest score had been a 97% and he had to admit that he was impressed. People don’t typically score that high on the first exam, so keep studying and working hard.

When Jared got his test back, he was ecstatic to see that he had gotten a 95%. He felt great for about two seconds before remembering that the top score had been a 97%. Jared had one guess as to who had gotten the top grade.

As soon as the lecture got out, Jared started walking back to his dorm. He had two hours before his next class and figured he could get caught up on the reading for his Introduction to Literature class. He still had two days to do it, but it never hurt to get things done ahead of time. Jared walked across campus, not paying too much attention to what was going on around him. He was about to cross the street when suddenly there was a hand gripping his arm and he was being yanked backwards. As soon as he was out of the street, he collapsed on the ground, and on to another person.

It took a moment for Jared to come to and push himself up. He looked over to see who was next to him and was shocked to find that it was none other than Jensen Ackles. “What the hell?” Jared asked.

“You were about to step out and there was a car coming so I pulled you back and…” Jensen trailed off.

“And what? Why are we on the ground?”

“I think… I think we connected,” Jensen said quietly.

“Connected? Wait. Like _connected_ connected? Like soulmates?” There was no way that this could be happening. There was no way that his soulmate was Jensen Ackles. Not in a million years.

“That’s what it felt like. Don’t you feel it?”

Jared didn’t want to admit it, but he could definitely feel something. His chest felt like it was on fire. All of his limbs felt numb. His brain was having a hard time thinking about anything else about Jensen being right there. Holy shit. “I need… I need to get out of here,” Jared said. He pushed himself to his feet on shaky legs and made his way back to his dorm room as fast as he could. 

Once inside he shut the door and locked it, thankful that Monday’s were the day Stephen had most of classes and would therefore be out of the room for most of the day. Jared tried to get his breathing under control. There was no way this was happening. He wouldn’t accept it. His soulmate was Jensen Ackles? No. There was no way that it could be true. If it was, how could they first be figuring it out now? 

A small voice in the back of Jared’s head reminded him that soulmates only find out about their own soulmate bond when they come into physical contact with the other person. Pulling someone from walking out in front of moving traffic would definitely be considered physical contact. Was that seriously the first time he and Jensen had ever touched each other? They had been in school together since they were five. There had to have been some other instance where they touched. This couldn’t be the first time. 

Jared continued wracking his brains trying to think of anything that would contradict what had just happened, but nothing came to mind and it made sense. Jared did whatever he could to avoid being near Jensen so the odds were pretty good that they had never even brushed against each other.

Part of his brain told him that he would just have to accept it and deal with the fallout, but the other part of his brain wanted to do nothing of the sort. The other part of his brain wanted to forget that Jensen Ackles even existed and ignore the fact that they were now potentially soulmates.

Jared was pulled from his thoughts by a knock on the door. “Jared?” a voice that Jared immediately recognized as Jensen’s asked. “Jared open the door and we can talk about this.”

But that was the problem. Jared didn’t want to talk about this. He didn’t want to talk about it because talking about it would be addressing it and addressing it made the whole thing become real, which was the last thing that Jared waned. Of all the people in the world, why did his soulmate have to be Jensen Ackles. Why did his soulmate have to be the one person he hated more than anyone else on the planet?

The knocking started again. “Jared come on,” Jensen said. “I know you’re in there. I just want to talk about this.”

Jared walked over to the door, unlocked it and pulled it open. “Well I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Jared you can’t avoid me forever and we really do have to talk about this.”

“Yeah, well I don’t want to.” Jared moved to close the door, not caring that Jensen was still standing there, but Jensen through an arm out to stop him. 

“Not talking about it isn’t going to make this go away.”

“Yeah, well I can try. Now you need to leave,” Jared said. 

“No.”

With one final shove, taking every ounce of strength Jared had, he was able to get the door shut and locked again. Jared turned around, placed his back against the door and slid to the ground. He pulled his knees to his chest and wondered when everything got to be so complicated.

***

Jared spent the whole day hiding out in his room. He didn’t go to any of the rest of his classes and for once he didn’t care. There were more important things to worry about than school. Like how this was going to work. How was he supposed to have Jensen Ackles as a soulmate? How were they supposed to make this work when Jared spent the last thirteen years hating Jensen with every fiber of his being?

That’s the thing. It wasn’t going to work. There was no other way around it. There was on way that this could work.

Stephen got back from his classes later that afternoon and knew immediately that something was wrong. He tried questioning Jared about it, but Jared refused to talk. He wasn’t even sure what was happing himself. How was he supposed to talk about this with someone else when he didn’t know what was happening?

When Jared crawled into his bed tonight, he couldn’t help but notice all the pain that was in his body. Not emotional pain, but physical pain. All his muscles hurt, his heart was racing, and it was becoming more painful to breath with every hour that passed.

The logical part of his brain knew that if he just went and talked to Jensen, everything would be ok. If he just had some more physical contact with Jensen all of this pain would just go away. But there lay the problem. He didn’t want to go and talk to Jensen. He didn’t want to go and be with Jensen. He didn’t want to do anything that would even make it seem like he was acknowledging Jensen.

So Jared spent the entire night awake, trying to ignore the pain and trying to push thoughts of Jensen from his mind.

By morning, Jared couldn’t take it anymore. He needed to see Jensen, his stupid pride and not wanting to deal with it be damned. He couldn’t spend the rest of his life like this. He reached for his phone before realizing that he didn’t have Jensen’s number. He didn’t know where Jensen lived on campus, so he had no way of contacting him. “Dammit,” Jared mumbled. “Wait.”

He slowly and painfully crawled out from his bed and went to his computer. He logged into his student email and was surprised to see an email from Jensen.

_If you change your mind, I’m over in Baker Hall. Room 332._

Jared was never so happy to see a message from Jensen. Jared shoved his phone in the pocket of his sweat pants and grabbed his keys before making his ay across campus toward Jensen’s dorm room.

The walk over took twice as long as it normally would have thanks to all of the pain that Jared was in. But finally, he made it over, swiped his student ID to get into the building and took the elevator to the third floor. Stairs shouldn’t have been that big of an issue, but with all the pain that Jared was in, just the idea of stairs made his muscles hurt even more.

When the elevator arrived on the third floor, Jared walked out and followed the signs to room 332. He took a deep breath and knocked on the door. Within seconds, the door was flung open. Jensen stood there looking more disheveled than Jensen had ever seen him. His hair was a mess, his eyes were bloodshot and his clothes were all rumpled.

“Thank god,” Jensen said. He stuck out an arm and pulled Jared into the room and quickly wrapped his arms around him. 

The pain relief was immediate. Jared’s muscles immediately start to relax. The pressure on his chest immediately started to ease off and he felt like he could breath normally again. It was crazy that something so small could make such a big difference. 

It didn’t even matter that he was standing here, in the middle of Jensen Ackles’s dorm room. It didn’t matter that Jensen Ackles was supposedly his soulmate. What matter is that this was the best he had felt in the last twenty four hours, possibly even in his entire life. As much as Jared didn’t want to admit it, he felt better and knew that he wasn’t going to be able to ignore Jensen forever. They were stuck together now.

Eventually Jensen leaned back. “Feel better?”

“Loads,” Jared said.

“Can we talk now?” Jensen asked.

Jared sighed. “I guess we have to.”

“Do you really hate me that much?”

“What?”

“Me?” Jensen asked again. “Do you really hate me that much that you don’t want to talk to me and make both of us go through that again? Because let me tell you, Jared, I am not going through that again. That is not going to happen.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Jared said.

“Then how did you mean it?”

Jared sighed again. This was definitely not going as well as he had planned, not that he had very high hopes for this to begin with. “Can we at least shut the door? I don’t need your entire floor hearing all of this.”

“Fine,” Jensen said. Jared stepped back and went to shut the door. The moment he left contact with Jensen, he could start to feel it again. He didn’t feel like he did last night, but he definitely didn’t feel as good as he did a few minutes ago. Why did the universe insist that he had to be with Jensen Ackles the entire time? What did he ever do to deserve this? 

As soon as the door was closed, Jensen said, “Now talk.”

“Ok,” Jared said. “I’m sorry.” Well, Jared didn’t really know if he was sorry. A full apology might take some time. There was over a decade of pent up anger and it wasn’t going to just vanish overnight, no matter how much Jared wanted it to.

“I’m calling bullshit on that,” Jensen said. 

Jared looked at him like he had grown a second head. “Did you… did you just swear?”

“What’s it matter?”

“What matters is that you have been so perfect our entire lives and I don’t think I ever heard you swear. I always assumed that you were too perfect for that.”

Jensen snorted. “I’m not really that perfect.”

“You beat me at everything,” Jared reminded him. “Everything. No matter what I did, you always did it better than me. For thirteen years, I had to just suck it up because I could never be as good as perfect Jensen Ackles.”

“Oh come on,” Jensen argued. “You’re exaggerating.”

Jared rolled his eyes. “You don’t get it because you were never on the receiving end of it. You never had to be the one who was constantly questioning if they were good enough because Jensen Ackles always was able to do it better than him. You were never the one who put in extra hours of studying and extra hours of work, trying to prove that you could be just as good as Jensen Ackles just to have Jensen come and beat you again. You never had to deal with any of that because you were always the best. Always.”

“Is that really what you think?”

“Of course that’s what I think. I’ve had to deal with it for years, so of course that’s what I think.”

“I wasn’t trying to be a jerk,” Jensen whispered. “Just… I was just trying to do my best and if that meant that I was always beating you, I’m sorry.”

“That wouldn’t have changed anything,” Jared said. “You still would have done your best and I wouldn’t have been good enough.”

“You were still good enough,” Jensen said. “I mean, you got into Stanford and that’s not easy to do.”

“Yeah, but the thing is Jensen, you go here too. This was going to be my safe haven and a place where I got to start over and I don’t know. I guess I can’t do that now.”

“You can still do it,” Jensen said. “I’ll stay out of your way from now on.”

Jensen looked so hurt and Jared immediately felt terrible. “I didn’t mean it like that,” Jared said. “I just… when I saw you in class that first day, I was angry. And sure all of this is probably just totally irrational and me just being an idiot, but still. You don’t have to go and try and avoid me forever. It’s my own issues that I have to deal with and besides. It’s going to be a little hard for us to avoid each other now.”

“Yeah,” Jensen agreed. “Who’d have thought?”

“You’re right,” Jared said. “Who’d have thought.”

There was a brief moment of silence before Jensen said, “I don’t know about you, but I didn’t get any sleep last night. Want to lay down?”

“You don’t have class?” Jared asked.

“It can wait.”

Jared had to force himself to bite his tongue so he wouldn’t make a snarky comment about perfect Jensen Ackles skipping class. Eventually he managed to say “Yeah. Sounds like a good idea.”


End file.
